Page 91 of Poster Girl

“Your Insight, dear,” she says. “Did you succeed in your investigation?”

Sonya’s throat tightens. She nods.

Mrs. Pritchard gives a small smile. She can’t remember the last time Mrs. Pritchard smiled at her. She’s wearing her pearls, tucked under her shirt collar, and her hair is pinned back in a neat knot, but there’s dirt under her trim fingernails.

“Have a good evening, Mary,” she says, and by the time she makes it to the stairwell, there are tears in her eyes. She doesn’t understand why.

A can of soup waits for her on her kitchen counter. Chicken noodle, the side dented—a grocery store donation. She stares at it for a long time. It’s a gift, obviously, from Nikhil—the only person who goes in her apartment when she isn’t home. Which must mean it’s also an apology.

She takes out her can opener, and turns the can upside down to open it, avoiding the dent. She dumps the gluey soup into a pot, and laughs, breathy. Earlier she begged the peace officers for ten minutes of freedom. Now she has all the freedom she could ask for, and she’s still in the Aperture making soup.

When the soup is hot, she carries it to Nikhil’s door, oven mitts still on her hands. She knocks with her elbow. He answers in his second favorite sweater, mustard yellow, with patches in places where it has worn thin over the years. The radio plays in the background.

The place smells like bread, which must mean Nikhil had Charlotte over to teach him how to make it.

“I see you got my apology,” Nikhil says to her, nodding to the pot in her hands.

“I’m going to be released,” she says. “Tomorrow.”

His eyes water a little, as they always do. He dabs at one of them with a handkerchief, and steps back to let her in. She sets the pot down on his table, and opens his kitchen cupboard to get bowls for them.

“We should summon the others, have a proper send-off,” Nikhil says.

Sonya shakes her head. She sets the bowls down, then goes back for the spoons.

“I have a lot to tell you,” she says.

Her hands tremble as she sorts through the spoons, looking for the big ones they use for soup. The clatter of the silverware is louder even than the radio. Nikhil sets his hand on her shoulder, in a gesture that reminds her of Alexander—how he is so careful not to startle her.

“I hate goodbyes,” she says, and her breath catches.

“So let’s not say them,” he says. “Let’s pretend absolutely nothing is going to change.”

She nods, and sits down at the table in her usual place. She takes off the pot lid and Nikhil hands her a ladle.

It’s possible Nikhil knows the truth about her father, that he always has. It’s possible he’s lied to her hundreds of times over the last ten years. The last few days have taught her that there’s no clarity in love,no honesty—that a person doesn’t become better than they are just because you love them.

She remembers, though, that last year Building 4 tried to throw her a surprise birthday party, and the truth seemed to bubble up in Nikhil’s throat every time he was around her. When he asked her to go to Charlotte’s apartment “for a bit of sugar,” he was downright gleeful. He may or may not be willing to lie to her, but he’s not particularly good at it.

So she doesn’t ask him if he knew what her father was doing, because she doesn’t believe he did—but also because she doesn’t want to know, not now, not the night before she leaves and won’t be permitted to come back. She’ll never sit in this apartment at Mr. Nadir’s old table, poking around in the back of a radio just because Nikhil says it’s a good idea. She’ll never rush to the roof in the morning to see if the seedlings have sprouted yet, like a child waking up in the winter to see if the snow forecast was right. Or demand that Charlotte play the Katherine music, even though the rest of Building 4 hates it; or exchange passive-aggressive remarks with Mrs. Pritchard about the state of her hair; or walk to the market with a basket of mint leaves, hoping to exchange them for a new towel or a pair of sneakers.

She closes her eyes, unable to look at Nikhil, suddenly, at this particular angle of his apartment, the warm light, the handkerchief he keeps in one hand to dab away tears, the beat-up table between them. His hand covers hers, and squeezes.

“Just like the life you had before you came here,” he says to her, “this life will soon be closed off to you, yes. It’s like... a cauterized wound. You have to seal it to stop it from killing you. But life is full of this... letting things change.”

She turns her hand, and holds on to him.

“I will spend the rest of my life here,” he says to her. She looks at him, into his bright, watery eyes, the color of an acorn kernel, a moth eyespot. “You can’t possibly understand how relieved I am to know you won’t have to.”

She nods. She doesn’t cry, because she hates to cry, but it’s a near thing.

“Take care of the garden,” she says.

After dinner she walks to Building 3. The moon is high and clear. Music with a heavy beat throbs in a distant apartment. The center of the Aperture is empty, the soup cans still left from the game of soccer. Near the corner of Building 1, she sees something shifting in the wind—just a weed, she realizes, when she draws closer. A dandelion, bare of seeds now, collapsing into winter.

She picked a dandelion for David’s funeral. When he was alive, he brought them to her whenever he found them—they grew in abundance in the courtyard. Sometimes he made them into crowns for her, or bracelets, by splitting the stems and weaving them together. He told her rarity conferred value, and in the Aperture, even a weed was rare.Besides,he said, tucking one of them behind her ear,what a nice shade of yellow.

She walks through the tunnel to Building 3, and the names of the lost crowd around her like ghosts. Jack is sitting in the courtyard, reading by flashlight. His Insight is all she can see of his face.

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